


Interlude: Kusakabe Reflects

by ProcioneRenaissanceArcana (wanderlustnostalgia)



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Gen, Hospitals, Post-Kokuyo Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27738622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustnostalgia/pseuds/ProcioneRenaissanceArcana
Summary: The day they discharge Tetsuya from the hospital four teeth short is the day they drag Hibari out from the ruins of Kokuyo.
Relationships: Hibari Kyouya & Kusakabe Tetsuya
Kudos: 7





	Interlude: Kusakabe Reflects

**Author's Note:**

> Canon: so Hibari is an asshole who just doesn't care about anyone and is also invincible  
> Me: lol bet

The day they discharge Tetsuya from the hospital four teeth short is the day they drag Hibari out from the ruins of Kokuyo, his body so beaten and broken it’s a miracle he managed to survive, let alone fight Rokudo Mukuro for as long as he did.

Tetsuya wishes he could have seen it. Instead he has to content himself with the delirious, half-conscious ramblings of Sawada Tsunayoshi, and puzzle over how such a clumsy runt (a herbivore if Tetsuya’s ever seen one) managed to defeat the man who left Hibari Kyouya for dead. He doesn’t even know what the guy looks like, so his attempts to imagine it pit Hibari up against some foreboding, shadowy specter, Hibari relentless as ever even as his body threatens to give up on him, even as he loses consciousness halfway through, operating purely on instinct and reflex. Superhuman, in every sense of the word.

But the boy lying in Namimori’s intensive care unit is just that—a boy. One unarmed and delicate as porcelain, the fight exhausted from his limp body, from reserves no normal person would have—cultivated by years of practice, perhaps, or no—drawn out through sheer, stubborn force of will.

Hibari would never have let him intervene. Tetsuya wouldn’t have stood a chance, he knows, and yet.

And yet he can’t help but look at the boy he first sparred in the Namimori parking lot three years ago, frail and small-looking under the bruises and bandages and tubes, and feel like he’s failed.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen I just...vulnerable Hibari. People caring for and about Hibari. Hibari also caring in his own asshole little-shit way. Kusakabe being the best right-hand man (sorry Gokudera ily).


End file.
